Auctiva Blog

Most people who’ve been to a carnival, fair or amusement park are familiar with the “ring toss.” Players toss wooden or plastic rings at a large grid of Coke bottles and try to get one to land just right over the bottle’s opening to win the big prize.

Every time my husband, Mike, and I visited Reno, NV, we would go to Circus Circus and play the carnival games there to win prizes for our daughter. She loved getting all those stuffed animals and anything else we were fortunate enough to win.

About six years ago, we were strolling through the casino’s family gaming area and came across the ring toss. We usually wouldn’t play it, but the prize was something we thought our daughter would love. The toys that day were from “Sesame Street”—ginormous Big Birds, Elmos, and Berts and Ernies. Our daughter was obsessed with Elmo at the time, so we had to try to win one for her.

Read more…

Good ‘Til Cancelled listings — beware.

Have you made sure your Good ‘Til Cancelled listings include a return policy and domestic handling time? If you haven’t, now’s the time to do it. Beginning this week, eBay listings that don’t include this information will not be renewed.

Scary isn’t it? I’ll say.

Seriously folks, it’s time to review your active and older saved GTC listings to make sure you’re in compliance. We released a handy feature a couple of weeks ago that we call our Bulk Live-Listing Revision Tool to make the process easier on you. It allows you to edit your active eBay listings without having to leave the Auctiva site! Take advantage of it.

eBay U.K. users, you have until Nov. 3 to comply with the new policy. And while that may seem like the distant future, November will be here before you know it.

Want to know more about this policy change? Read our Auctiva EDU article, and be sure to check out our FAQs and tutorials. We’re here to help you through this transition, and the more you know, the easier it will be to keep in step with eBay.

What does it mean to be “green?”

As Kermit the Frog once sang, it’s not easy being green—or is it? Of course our favorite Muppet wasn’t referring to the same “being green” that’s become the mantra of the 21st century.

With eBay launching its Give. Good. Green. campaign this month, we thought about the ways Auctiva tries to be more environmentally friendly. We’ve had separate recycling bins for aluminum, paper and plastic in all of our offices for a very, very long time.

There are also bins for recycling batteries and we donate used computers and monitors to our local Computers for Classrooms program.

The printers in our many offices sit silent for most of the day. Instead, our staff communicates via e-mail, instant messaging, phone and in person, of course.

Our break room has a water filtration system, but no disposable cups—you’ve got to bring your own reusable cup or your favorite Kleen Kanteen (which, by the way, originated here in Chico, CA).

Read more…

I know the benefits of blogging regularly. Blogs can help boost your items’ exposure in search engines. They’re a great marketing tool, plus blogging is free and easy to do. So why don’t more people (like me) use blogs to promote their items?

For me, it’s a time thing. Sure, it only takes a few minutes to do, but when you have a job, kids, housework—where do you fit in the time? I hardly have time to list on eBay, let alone blog about it.

So here I am blogging about a blog.

Read more…

Our latest release rolled out this morning, and with it came some very helpful features.

Did someone say spell check? Well, it’s back! And we’ve made several other enhancements to make listing easier and help you comply with new eBay policies.

As most sellers know, merchants can no longer offer shipping insurance as an optional fee to their buyers. But that doesn’t mean you have to risk shipping packages without insurance. You can insure items and pay for coverage yourself, or include the cost of insurance in an item’s price or shipping and handling fee.

With eBay’s new policy, it is the seller’s responsibility to make sure items arrive safely to buyers’ hands. This means you will have to decide whether to add insurance, or just drop packages off at the post office and cross your fingers. Our new Auto-Purchase feature for Auctiva Shipping Insurance offers a simple way to insure your packages and give yourself some peace of mind.

Read more…

We want to ensure Auctiva users know that on Sept. 22 eBay will begin enforcing a new requirement on Good ‘Til Cancelled listings. Sellers will have to specify both a handling time and return policy for their listings. You can read more about this here.

As a part of our Sept. 9 site update, we’re introducing a new tool that that will allow customers to make bulk revisions to their live active eBay listings directly from Auctiva’s manage listings page. This tool—which will be available to all to Auctiva customers on a listing services plan, and those who are still in their free 30-day trial period—will provide support for users who wish to make bulk changes to their Good ‘Til Cancelled listings to meet the handling time and return policy enforcement deadline.

Users who have such listings, and who have opted for our Free Tools plan, can sign up for a paid plan to immediately have use of Auctiva’s bulk live listing revision tool. eBay also provides the ability to edit the fields using the Bulk Edit tool on My eBay.

Making these changes is important since listings that don’t comply with the new requirements could be taken down.

Tony Maxey
Auctiva Product Manager

With all the hoopla lately about the new GM-eBay Motors promotion, it reminded me about my brief stint as a used-car dealer.

Back in the early ’90s, our local county had its biennial auction that included a variety of used desks, chairs, office equipment and several used cop cars. My dad mentioned that those cars went for cheap, and that if a person had the money to invest, they could make a tidy profit by reselling them. I had a little money saved up, and being the starving college student that I was at the time, I saw a golden opportunity to make a few bucks.

My dad and I came up with a deal that I would bid and pay for the cars, and he would take care of the brake-light inspection, smog, licensing, etc., and handle the resale of the cars. For his work, we decided to split any profits 50–50. We went to the auction and found a few cars that looked good if the price was right. I bid and ended up winning two of the cars—one for $250, the other for $300. They were your typical police cars, complete with souped-up engines, heavy-duty bumpers and spotlights. Of course the decals and lights were taken off (rats!), but everything else was left alone.

After getting them registered, inspected, licensed, etc, it was my dad’s job to sell them. He found buyers for both within a week, and each car was sold for $1,000. After all the fees that had to be paid to get the cars ready to be sold, we made about a $1,000 profit to share. Not bad. If only all the junk I buy at auctions would resell that well!

Rebecca Miller

Product Analyst